UNIDEE at Cittadellarte is changing. After 14 years as a residency programme, and a transitional 15th edition questioning the relevance of traditional residency schemes while testing out a new format, UNIDEE has evolved into a multifaceted platform, with a new educational programme based on interdisciplinary research, knowledge sharing and experience exchange, alongside a series of artists’ residency projects.

UNIDEE – University of Ideas offers an educational artistic programme of weekly residential modules taking place both at Cittadellarte and at international academic partners’ sites. An alternative to the traditional educational system, it works in synergy with international academies and public universities. It fosters processes of cross-pollination to investigate the relationship between art and public sphere, focusing on topics like social responsibility, urban transformation, participatory art practices, demopraxy, alternative models of local economic development, sustainability, etc.

Designed for artists, curators, students, social entrepreneurs, cultural project managers, etc., UNIDEE – University of Ideas’ modules put forward a participatory learning experience in a small group setting, through practices, methodologies and tools apt at forging knowledge while fostering relational skills, socially responsible behaviours that value diversity, “effective” horizontal thought processes, and the possibility to “err,” on a quest for new means of expression.

UNIDEE – University of Ideas, in keeping with Michelangelo Pistoletto’s foundational principle of Cittadellarte as an “interdisciplinary educational laboratory” (Manifesto Progetto Arte, 1994) aims to stimulate the emergence of a new figure, catalyst of artistic projects for a responsible social transformation: the artivator. The programme is conceived as a long-term endeavour with the mission to be engaging continuously with civil society not only through dialogue and active participation, but also through the (re)localisation of those processes of symbolic identification on the side of the modules’ and residencies’ participants, in Biella as well as in their own original social contexts and groups.

UNIDEE – University of Ideas’ educational programme of weekly modules at Cittadellarte kicks off with its first year on May 4. Its programme for 2015 sets out to explore three broad concepts: temporality, responsibility, participation. Analysed from a variety of angles (artistic, historical, geographic, philosophical, political, economic, anthropological, sociological, mediological, juridical, architectural, etc.), these three key topics will be unravelled together by participants, mentors and guests, through an exciting blend of formats spanning from the theoretical to the performative. The modules will encompass experiments in art history paradigms, activism, commons, prefigurative politics, territorial transformation, museology, visual narratives, social imagery, relational systems, new rituals, social cooking, urban space exploration, ideas gathering (etc.).

UNIDEE – University of Ideas’s mentors & guests for 2015 (in order of appearance):